"NEW FOR 2013! All Club subscribers will receive early access to all non-subscription products! That means you’ll have the chance to purchase hot items not available through subscriptions before non-subscribers regardless of the brand. And if they sell out to subscribers during the limited access period, that’s it – no additional product will be made available to non-subscribers at that time!"

_________________JLU Forever! And is MOTUC EVER getting around to Ram Man?

Actually, the jury is still out as to what the "Early Access" bonus is all about. Based upon what Matty wrote, Early Access is not going to give subscribers a chance at getting multiples of of subscription figures.

According to the sub, the Early Access is only for items that are not part of any subscriptions line of figures. (This would be items like the PKE meter, MOTUC reissues, MOTUC's Granamyr who is NOT part of the MOTUC sub, etc.). Based upon the presentation, it sounds like Matty is planning a few items that are not part of the subs but still MOTUC or DCUC since they wanted to keep subscriptions nice and cheap. I think especially with MOTUC they intend to have the variants be present outside of the sub (like Bubble Power She-Ra).

Example: Lets say they decide to offer an oversized Doomsday next year for DCUC, and a Battle Ram vehicle for MOTU (these are both hypothetical, just for the sake of the example). Neither of which is included in their respective subs (Neither Infinite Earths nor Club Eternia). What early access might mean is that sub holders would be the first ones to add Doomsday and/or the Battle Ram before day of sale individuals. This does not mean that subscribers would be able to add an extra Ram Man or Elongated Man since they are part of their respective subscriptions.

Matty wrote:

All figures EXCEPT the club-exclusive figure will also be available at MattyCollector.com around the 15th of each month without the membership. Provided they haven’t sold out during the Early Access period, non-subscribers will have the chance to buy these figures, but the price will be higher ($27 for regular figures). Availability isn’t guaranteed and the purchase limit is ten (10) per person.

This statement makes it seem like any figure MattyCollector sells is up for early access, but I think it is a case of bad wording. The statement says that ALL figures (minus sub exclusives) will be available on Matty. All figures meaning BOTH subscription monthly figures and non-subscriber items like Granamyr.

What they probably intended to write was, "Provided they haven't sold out during the Early Access period, non-subscribers will have a chance to buy any non-subscription figures." As I mentioned, with MOTUC, Club Eternia used to have 4 variants as part of the sub in addition to the beasts/multipacks. To keep the subscription cheap, the variants were probably pushed out of the sub and will become non-subscription items like Bubble Power She-Ra.

While I like the idea of early access for all items sold on Matty for subholders, it doesn't make any sense for Matty to offer an Early Access for ANY subscriber to all items. If that were true, someone could just buy the Watchmen subscription for $150 and still get all of the MOTUC figures they want without paying the Club Eternia $505 subscription (and avoiding the Fighting Foe Men). Given this option, why would anyone who isn't an MOTUC completist buy a Club Eternia subscription?

With that out of the way...Matty hurry up and implement Early Access to the current year so that I don't have to pay double shipping for all of the final JLU 3-Packs!

With that out of the way...Matty hurry up and implement Early Access to the current year so that I don't have to pay double shipping for all of the final JLU 3-Packs!

Ah, but unless I missed it, there is no word that the early access items will be combined to ship with your sub figures! It would be nice if they did, but I think that would be a logistics nightmare, depending on how long the early-access window is open.

Also, I think Matty got the wording right:

Matty wrote:

Pay Less for Subscription Products: The cost for monthly subscription figures in 2013 is $18 each when shipped through a subscription, but $20 for purchases made on regular sale days – that is, if they’re not sold out to Early Access customers via Early Access!

That makes it seem like subscription figures (minus the sub exclusive) are fair game for early access. It's a re-wording of what you quoted above, but it seems to say the same thing. I got this from the DCIE subscription page.

EDIT: Reading more of it though, they write this:

Matty wrote:

NEW! Early Access to Non-Subscription Products: In 2013, all Club subscribers get early access to all non-subscription products, regardless of brand! That means you’ll have the chance to purchase hot items not available through subscriptions before non-subscribers, like 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises 8” Batman™ figure and the Ghostbusters™ PKE Meter prop replica. Availability is first-come, first-served, so if products sell out to subscribers during the early access period, that’s it – no additional product will be made available to non-subscribers at that time

TRDouble, you are right. Nobody knows for sure. No matter what ONE of those descriptions has to be wrong. Either Early Access lets any subscriber have early access to all non-subscriber items only or Early Access lets any subscriber have early access to all items sold on MattyCollector early.

That's why we have to wait until Toy Guru steps up and explains things. All we can do is speculate in the meantime using the information we do have (which is contradictory).

Logically, it doesn't make sense for Matty to offer Early Access to all MattyCollector items. If they did, it would open up a very large can of worms. MOTUC is Matty's only stable line currently. If MOTUC died because of low subscriptions, chances are that MattyCollector would also die off. Since Scott is now the head of MattyCollector, I doubt he would do anything to jeopardize that. MOTUC subscriptions were at an all time low last year. This year, they increased the price and have fewer "A Listers" left to keep fans enticed so MOTUC subscription numbers are probably going to decrease even further. That decrease is only going to be exacerbated through Early Access if someone signs up to the much cheaper Club Black Freighter and can still buy all the Ram Mans they want without having to worry about buying Fighting Foe Men or other characters they may not want.

My guess would be that they originally intended Early Access to be early access to all items. However, someone probably figured out the loophole I just mentioned and at the last minute they changed the description to "Non-Subscription" and forgot to remove all other references to Early Access that implied differently.

TRDouble wrote:

Ah, but unless I missed it, there is no word that the early access items will be combined to ship with your sub figures! It would be nice if they did, but I think that would be a logistics nightmare, depending on how long the early-access window is open

You are correct that it was never outwardly expressed that Early Access would have combined shipping. However, based upon the fact that Scott has been pushing for combining subscriptions with "Day of" items since announcing that subscribers would be able to do that in 2012 (*He said this during the 2011 Mattypalooza) AND the test run that we all witnessed in February, I would believe that a secondary purpose of Early Access is to allow for combined shipping.

In February, the test phase that we all saw allowed you to add items from the upcoming sale to the cart and have it ship with the items that were coming as part of the subscription. My guess is that subscribers would have a small window of time to add non-subscription items like the PKE meter or the JLU figures to their cart a week or two weeks before the sale (before the sub items are shipped out). That way, subscribers have the Early Access items added to the same box as their subscription items and shipped together. At least this is ideally what Matty will try, but this is Digital River we are talking about.

I'd rather pay extra to buy the product off of Ebay than pay even more for a bunch of figures I don't want. If the DCUC sub doesn't reach its goal, then only Watchmen subscribers, He-Man subscribers, and scalpers will have access to "Early Shopping."

But a really nice scare tactic for DCU, Dark Knight and JLU collectors. Well done.

An even better and more fair policy would be to offer subs for ALL product lines.